


Firelight

by wraithes



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: A little tender moment, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 14:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20547821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithes/pseuds/wraithes
Summary: The chapel is a refuge to the hunter, but for more reasons than it's burning incense and opulent brick work ; upon the floor lays the only friend one can make in this nightmare.





	Firelight

The hunter was tired. Each limb ached as if it were made of lead, feeling as if his whole frame was strung together with loose thread rather than muscle and sinew. The situation was formidable, but his practical disposition remained intact ; laugh it off, shrug it from lean shoulders, pray for it to end (if he even remembered how to pray at all) and survive.

Crossing the threshold into the chapel, Arkadios listened to the sound of his own heeled boots click and drag across the cobble as he passed by what few survivors he was able to gather with no more than a nod in their direction. His gait altered towards the end of the chapel’s long stretch, slipping into something more languid, as if he were gliding on air - a gait that said dancer more than it said man who had just gotten his ribs cracked and torso split with a serrated blade.

“Ah, good hunter, alive and looking quite well.”

The dweller smiled, head tilting as his long fingers twisted nervous knots in the hem of his robes. It was always good to see him, the hunter thought, as if he were the one permanent thing in the never-ending night of impermanence.

“Alive,” Arkadios hummed, “but the other half is negotiable.”

His torso was drenched in deep red hues, dribbling across the floor, after all.

It was their little dance. A bicker of back and forth that both had grown so accustomed to. Dropping the weight of his axe onto the ground and harnessing his pistol, the hunter stepped forward before letting gravity do the rest ; with a gruff sigh, Arkadios came crashing down cross legged on the cold stone floor, a smile pulling at his scarred-up lip as he watched the dweller reel back with his own nervous laugh.

“You don’t mind if I sit here a little while, do you?”

The hunter asked it like he hadn’t been doing this for so long, starting the habit so many visits ago and maintaining it ever since. Come back to the chapel, state his greeting, fall down into the hard reprieve of the dust and grime covered chapel floor. Arkadios tilted his head, awaiting the answer he knew would come on shaky, bated breath.

Like clockwork, it came.

“Ah, of course not, good hunter, stay as long as you’d like, make yourself comfortable, if it isn’t too much a bother.”

“No bother at all, friend.”

Silence moved across them as Arkadios relaxed, his calloused hands reaching across his arms to undo the latches of gauntlets and then further up to pull the laces of his outer robing. He could feel the dweller’s eyes on him, that golden gaze that tracked his every movement. To this day, he was never quite able to figure out the dweller’s intentions - was he watching out of fear, a nervous reflex that was paranoid that the hunter’s hands could turn to fists at any moment, or was it perhaps out of curiosity, his almost-blind eyes trying to remember what it was like to be human, committing such simple acts to memory. Arkadios toyed idly with the idea that it was neither of those things, however, and his gaze was one of want and desire. The need to be close to someone else, to smell the mortal scent of blood and sweat and charred robes.

With a contented groan, the hunter was now down to the essentials - trousers, gaping undershirt that had long ago be stained and tattered beyond repair. He could move without the reminder that he was, above all else, a weapon. The hunter was just a man in that moment, a tired man, a man who needed the comfort of company as much as the poor dweller did.

“Me and you, we aren’t so different.”

Arkadios mused to break the silence, leaning back on his hands and letting his long, gangly legs unfurl before him. He chuckled as the dweller shifted almost uncomfortably to accomodate how close his feet had gotten to the edge of his red robes.

“Good hunter, we are as different as different can be, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so. You save so many people, you’re a good man.”

Those nervous hands again, twisting and toying in the red sea that surrounded him. Arkadios shook his head.

“You’re a better man than I am, even if you are foolish for thinking you aren’t. I mean,” He looked towards the people that had gathered there, the people that had been saved by the grace of the hunter and the hospitality of the dweller, “these people are alive because of you. You know that, right?”

“Oh, well, it’s not because of me, it’s because of a brave soul like you. Fightin’ off those beasts, telling the men and women about this little place - ”

Arkadios interrupted, “ - all that means is that we make a great team. I might fight the beasts but you burn the incense - we are two halves of one whole. We could have never saved them all, neither me or you, but together, we did something real nice for these people.”

He caught the dweller’s gaze for a fleeting moment, noticing the hint of what he could only describe as a blush spread across the ashen flesh of his face. It was endearing how easy it was to stir the other man, how he turned away out of embarrassment, how he curled into himself, like he was threatening to vanish at any moment. The good hunter had never considered himself much of a social person, but in the dweller’s fine company, it was so easy to come across as flirtatious.

Arkadios leaned in a little closer then, letting the smoke that curled up from the thurible around the dweller’s neck waft over him, coating him in the smell of rich oud and smooth copal. He was grateful that the dweller had always smelled so good, his clothes perfumed with smoke and the deep notes of herb gardens and flower beds he remembered from his own childhood. Like a piece of home, the scent of better days was grafted to the other’s dark flesh.

Clearing his throat, the hunter broke the silence once more, pulling both of their minds from whatever delicate reverie they had caught themselves in.

“Tell me one of your riddles,” Arkadios smiled, the temptation of sleep weighing heavy on his dark eyelids as well as the lopsided smirk, “one of the easier ones, friend, I am much too stupid for that last one you asked me. The one about the coin had my mind tied up in knots for a week.”

“Oh, well,” the man laughed, turning back to face the hunter with his awkward but doting gaze, “I thought of a real good once since I last seen you, good hunter. This one is sure to please.”

“Go on with it, then,” The good hunter chuckled, reaching out to bat his hand against the thin, skeletal arm of the other man, watching how the other’s expression contorted and a snort of surprised laughter fell from his flared nostrils. “Don’t keep me waiting, dweller.”

The nameless man shrunk back in his red robes, as if all of a sudden he wasn’t so confident about his riddle-telling prowess. The hunter watched him with gentle and eager eyes - it was hard for him, he knew that, these social interactions more terrifying than the beasts that loomed outside. Arkadios did his best to accommodate, letting his stare soften behind thick black lashes, his hand that had just playful struck the dweller now smoothing down over the fabric - it was surprisingly soft.

“Ah, well, good hunter,” The dweller began, “it is a simple question.”

“I am listening.”

“What belongs to you, but other people use it more than you?”

The hunter was stumped for a moment, his long features drawing together out of confusion. The question danced around his foggy, tired head as his thought process tried to catch up with an answer. The dweller seemed excited by his confusion, his shoulders slumped forward and face upturned towards the hunter with a look of delight.

“What belongs to me,” Arkadios mused, “but other people use it more than me.”

“Correct, good hunter, that is the riddle - if it is too hard, I can give you another,” An apprehensive tone, one weighed down with the fear of having done wrong.

“No, not at all, friend,” he was curiously still holding onto the dweller’s robe, rubbing the tattered hem between his finger tips, “just let me think.”

“_Of course, of course._”

Arkadios mulled over the question for a while longer before admitting he wasn’t very good at riddles, his expression of concentration starting to falter. His focus was fading, his eyes wandering over the dweller’s long arms, watching his fingers push and pull against the cobblestone floor, listening to his soft breathing and the occasional nervous laugh that fell from his strange lips. Arkadios was able to pull his attention back to the matter at hand, but only barely.

“Is it something that you use?”

“Ah, not as often as I should, I am afraid, good hunter.”

Arkadios was even more puzzled then. He was not easily frustrated, especially with such simple things, but the riddle grated on him just as much as an ill-timed molotov or a miscalculated swing of his blade. He let out a slow sigh, smoothing his well-worn palm down the other man’s arm then, watching how the dweller seemed to stiffen. Patting the back of the dweller’s hand, the hunter noticed just how soft the flesh was there, thin and surprisingly smooth, though the jut of bone and knuckle created stark contrast to his own strong grasp.

“I’m afraid I might be too stupid even for this one, friend.”

“_Arkadios_.”

“What is it?”

The chapel dweller laughed then, a genuine noise that lacked the nervous bite it usually carried. That same blush made its way back. Arkadios shook his head in order to say ‘I don’t follow’ when his voice was too tired to.

“That’s the answer.”

“The answer is _my name._”

Arkadios said it like he was offended, like he didn’t quite understand what the other was saying to him, until it all fell into place. The hunter laughed then, shaking his head as he let gravity take him even further, his weight flopping back into the cold floor.

“The answer is _my name _!”

He said it again, his laugh gruff and dry at the edges as he looked over towards the dweller who loomed so close.

“That is a good one, friend. You were right, it surely impressed me.”

“Ah, well, that’s good to hear, good hunter. Music to my ears, as some might say.”

“And you are right,” Arkadios pointed his finger at the dweller in faux accusation. “You should say it more. My name, that is. I like hearing it in that accent of your’s - much different than from where I’m from.”

“Ah, of course, of course. I will do better and use it from time to time.”

“Good. No one else will, if you don’t. I might just forget it, myself.”

Arkadios closed his eyes then, allowing the small world to turn black for even just a moment. Knowing he was in the chapel dweller’s company was a comfort, his gaze warm as he felt it roam across him - he had missed the simple act of being looked after, the feeling of being out of harm’s reach if only for a second or two.

The hunter was content to lay like that forever, quiet and close, as he had spent so many nights before. It was their secret little ritual, a few seconds of stolen shut-eye no more than an arm’s reach from the chapel’s diligent and obedient guardian. Arkadios was at the edge of unconsciousness, whatever that truly entailed anymore, as his body worked to relax against the unforgiving floor. He was slipping into the deep blue sea of sleep, ready to sever the conscious thread, when he heard a simple uttering of syllables. At first, he struggled to make it out, but then it came again, more confident.

The good hunter took a deep breath as he pieced together the sounds - his name, spoken so gently and with the insecure cadence reminiscent of a child taking its first steps.

His name, again and again. A lullaby.

Practice makes perfect.


End file.
